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Happy Birthday, Knut!

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Happy Birthday, Knut!
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 3 to 5
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	3.81

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		activist, dubbed, gingerly, k-noot, must-see, pointed, basis, should, press, task, luckily, superstar, birth, nearby, view, several
	content words:		Berlin Zoo, Thomas Doerflein, Leipzig Zoo, Like Knut, Unlike Knut, Knut Day

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Happy Birthday, Knut! By Vickie Chao

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¹     December 5, 2006, should have been a happy day for Tosca. On that day, she gave birth to twin cubs. Tosca, you see, is a twenty-year-old polar bear. She lives at the Berlin Zoo. But sadly, on that day, after giving birth to the twin cubs, Tosca rejected them. Nobody knows why.
 
²     To save the cubs, the zoo keepers used an extended fishing net to scoop them out. They decided to raise them themselves. Their task was met with a very rocky start. That is because several days after they took over, one of the cubs died. But, luckily, Knut (pronounced "k-noot") survived. For the first forty-four days of his life, Knut lived in an incubator. After he was strong enough, the zoo put him up in his own room. It even devoted a keeper just to him. The keeper, Thomas Doerflein, adored Knut. He gave him a bottle of milk every two hours. He played with him. He bathed him. And he even slept right next to him. Thanks to his loving care, Knut survived. He was the first polar bear cub to survive at the Berlin Zoo in over thirty years!
 
³     On March 23, 2007, Knut met the public for the first time.

Paragraphs 4 to 7:
For the complete story with questions: click here for printable

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